Some days, when the Sun touches the horizon with its final pink rays, I still sit back and think of all the flowers that I never got to give you: white carnations on your birthday; red roses on a first anniversary; dandelion puffballs on random Sunday mornings; jasmines on Saturday night walks. I still sit back and think about how I could have woken up to your uncensored dreams, imploring lips and gentle morning breaths, or perhaps, driven off into the city, in the middle of the night, to ceaselessly stargaze and wonder with you. I still sit back and think about how my life would have been more vivid if you had been around.

That evening, when you walked into the café, I knew it was the last time I was seeing you here. Yet, I came – to meet you, to breathe you in, and to absorb all I could of you. I remember looking at you with torn up eyes for so long that I swear I had your contours memorized, knowing fully well that they would serve only to be replayed on loop for months, years perhaps, till you had been reduced to a set of soft muscle memories and shadow sights.

That evening, when you walked into the café, I knew it was too late to confide in you. So, I left words dangling in the spaces between your breaths and mine, vague sentences of hope, vague phrases of emptiness. And I foolishly assumed I could still make it out of that café alive. But the truth is: that evening, I experienced eternity. I never really walked out. A part of me still lives there.

There was so much left of me to give you that I didn’t know where to begin. Why couldn’t you just claim what already had your name engraved on it? It had been there for far too long. Like dirt covers wrecks, let dust not fade away the prints your fingers left over mine, when you clasped my hand in yours, a minute too long, a little too tight: pearly, translucent, and concentric almost. For those are the prints that define you among seven billion others. Those are the prints that make you mine.

I’ll always remember the only day we were together. It was the only day I woke up and rushed to watch the sun rise. There have been sunsets ever since…